Tower
__TOC__ 'Summary' Tower (Extra stages) is a special set of stages which take place at start of every month and is available for the rest of that month. Unlike normal quest and daily quest, tower stages offer much more challenging content, and require some more serious effort to clear than normal quest. It's more about solving a puzzle than testing players' grinding capacity. Tower stages are located in the Extra Quest tab in the Quest screen. There are 5 towers for all 5 elements (fire, water, wind, light, dark) in Merc Storia, respectively. All quests here don't cost any AP, so it's a good idea to give it a try. In these 5 towers, they can be divided into 3 main types: Run tower, Tap tower, Defense tower. *'Run tower' has quite same layout as normal quest and Inner quest. The top 2 towers (no.1 and no.2) in the Extra quest tab. *'Defense tower' let your party stand still on the left side defending against a horde of different pets. Stage clear after all pets are defeated. The bottom 2 towers (no.4 and no.5) are defense towers *'Tap tower' is similar with defense tower, except: your units will attack only when you tap their respective avatar icons, fixed guts when you deploy your units is always 10 guts, spirit rise (guts) pets have no effect. Tower no.3 is tap tower. Except Sky floor (天空層) on each towers, at all remaining floors, there are only mono-element pets (in fire tower, there are only fire pets) Your SP at start of battle is: party's initial SP x 5 + facility's SP 'Preparation' Since towers quest require some more effort in grinding than normal quest, it's recommend to have as many units available as possible, some of them should be at 10 or higher awaken rank. HE may change tower's content and add unexpected challenges. Recommend SP at start of battle is at least 20,000 'Run tower' You have a limited time to clear each stage (5 minutes for 1st tower, and around 1-3 minutes for 2nd tower), so you will need either units with fast dps with maximum speed boost possible (speed rune, slipstream formation). Multi-target units is mostly good in towers since you will need to clear waves of mobs quickly before they can overlap each other. Some stages only allowed melee weapon type so some mid slash/stab/strike preparation are highly recommended. 'Defense tower' Literally, you don't need a tank here, unless you are against a boss and your damage is insufficient, since there are waves of small pet (actually each of them can deal some good amount of damage), and they tend to overlap each other so your tank will be very likely to get wiped quickly. Recommend party formation is combining long range and mid range dps, and adjust to confront specific floors. Tap tower Though it's similar to defense tower, it has slightly different build concept. Units will only attack when you tap also means attack rate doesn't have any effect here. So these are criteria needed for building a good party for this tower. * Damage output: single-hit units. Most of them have quicker animation than multi-hit units, so you will be able to cause more attack in the same period of real time. (be noted that when you tap a unit to reset its animation when it's dealing hits to enemies, all consequent hits in that attack counted from when you tap that unit will deal no damage, though there is still damaging effect) * Rune abusing: most of runes will have more advantage on single-hit units. There are only 2 runes which will work better on multi-hit units: Retract Rune and Sorcery Rune. Most of cases players will go for damage as it's harder to both airshield and tap units at the same time, causing a negative impact to damage output. A multi-target healer is considered when stage contain DoT damage. You can try using berserk rune when your units reach lower hp and using healer when they are close to get knocked out from DoT damage. Note: It's best to simply launch the quest without any preparation to figure out the content of the stages before making any preparation. Team building and tips This section covers some approach toward specific categories of floors in tower. (Contribution are welcomed here. It's better to have different point of views to solve problems in towers) (Update monthly to keep the guide up-to-date) Run tower * 5-minute time limit: Actually there is no time limit in this tower, the reason for the 5-minute is: after 5 minutes a massive wave of bosses (around 15-20 bosses with at least 150,000,000 hp each) will appear, making the stage "impossible to clear". Recommended party is slipstream formation (+20 move speed for all units), and at least 2 units can deal damage (some stages put 0% weapon penalty, keep that in mind). Optimized pet setup is 3x spirit rise (guts pet), 1 weapon souls or 1 element souls (from here will call Souls for short), 1 mono-break. * Specific time limit: Pet skill usage is banned. You will likely rely on element advantage and runes here, as it's your main source of optimizing damage output. Defense tower * Against regular floors (only have weapon modifier): Recommend any party can spoil weapon bonus, this will make the battle more breathtaking in a long run. Optimized pet setup is 3x spirit rise (guts pet), 1 weapon souls or 1 element souls (from here will call Souls for short), 1 mono-break. * Melee floors: range weapons (bow, gun, mage) will deal 0 damage (but their runes still take effect). Recommend mid slash, stab, strike party. Optimized pet setup is 3x spirit rise (guts pet), 1 weapon souls or 1 element souls (from here will call Souls for short), 1 mono-break. * Solo floors: only 1 unit can be deployed at any time (except using units from help groups). A 2-target units is best for this floor (damage output not too low, but can still able to clear mobs). Optimize pet setup is Souls * Boss-only floors: these stages may, or may not allow pet usage. You need a multi-target party for these stages. Some airshield skill (to reset attacking animation) may required as there may have time limit. If pet usage is available, depend on allowed number of units, priority is: souls > break > spirit rise. * Only help groups allowed (a.k.a friendship floors): There is 2 ways of clearing this stage: either using a big high level unit pool or using other players' help. If you are using other players' help, note that: ** Help button can be refresh by restarting game. ** Time limit for each help request is 180 seconds. Each stage a player can request help twice: the 1st time is default request (in battle help tab) when you launch quest with help setting ON, the 2nd time is when you send any message to any chat room (with help setting ON). ** In battle, time interval for each wave of external help units is 30 seconds real time. This time interval can be reset by switching out of game task then going back to game task. Tap tower Simply tap your unit when pets are within range to attack. Tap healer when your units are close to be knocked out from DoT. Beware boss's reach and range may wipe your party out! About barrier This new implementation can happen in any floor in towers given each month. Barrier is a buff to pets by reducing incoming damage each hit from units by exact amount shown below the chat log in battle screen. For example: a hit which literally deal 12,000 damage goes through a 7,000 damage barrier, will result to dealing 5,000 damage. Any hit which deal less damage than this barrier reduction will result to 0 damage. So single-hit units are highly recommended. Range check (damage range) This implementation is introduced as a new challenge to tower and Road to Glory event The range meter has 6 gauges, decided by range counted from the monster: * Very close: 1-30 * Close: 31-60 * Quite close: 61-90 * Quite far: 91-120 * Far: 121-160 * Very far: 161-200 Each gauge is assigned by a certain modifier. And when damage is dealt (number appears) from a certain units, it's multiplied by the assigned modifier, based on its respective range. An unit with 160 range dealing damage to a monster when the distance is 95 will result to damage being multiplied by 91-120 range. Damage modifier is fixed per certain stages, not randomized. Reward This section covers basic reward layout. Note that floors which offer ★4 awaken book may offer ★5 book instead. They should be informed in newsletter at the end of the previous month, and the beginning of the current month. 'Reference' *ひゆき's tower guide (record) here Category:Quest Category:Game Features